bealios

Sky News must think it is settled today as there are vans and equipment camped outside my office (not too far from the arbitration)

I'm not worrying too much about this game at all. I'm pretty certain that given our generally weak squad, going out last night in 90 mins was the best result possible for our promotion chances - only Guthrie's red card spoiled it. It also can't help the kids' motivation if the manager makes it clear to the press before the game that we really don't want to be in this cup this year.

it won't come out of ashleys pocket you can count on that Yes it will, if its over a certain amount that has already been factored into the price. do you not think the price/terms may change depending on the outcome ? When the club went on the market none of the bidders were given full info about the Keegan claim i.e. no contracts, legal documents etc. - they were given a summary prepared by NUFC's own lawyers, less than a page. They put a likely value on the claim. If it comes in over and above that it potentially has an impact on price - although there are other ways it can be factored in.

it won't come out of ashleys pocket you can count on that Yes it will, if its over a certain amount that has already been factored into the price.

I wouldn't worry too much about affording it, it will be factored into the sale price for the club if it is more than expected - effectively it comes out of Ashley's pocket in the long run.

Gutted, just walked back in the door from holiday and the Sky + recording didn't work. Sounds like we didn't play brilliantly, but still took 3 points from one of the supposedly top teams in this league. Anyone know if the highlights are on at any point later?

Good post. A token protest will suffice, such as some boos (I'm sure boo boo and his hanger-on mates are experts at this) when he takes his seats is good enough, after that it's time to support the team properly. There needs to be an atmosphere to lift the players, not one to send them into some kind of shell and had the initiative to Reading. if there is to be any chanting against him i just hope hope its after the final whistle after support has been given to the team. however should we go a goal down i doubt many would be able to contain themselves (it's been a sign of the last few years that the crowd trying to get the team going after conceding has all but disappeared). in a perverse way i'd like to hear the crowd in a raucous "theres only one mike ashley" type thing and get him with humour as even he'd realise we were taking the piss. That would be hilarious. Doubt it would happen though, and it would probably start a riot in the stands.

Exactly, the criteria seems to be 1. Absolutely desperate for employment. 2. Out of football for a number of years. 3. Won't ask for any cash and will rely on loan signings. 4. Says nice things about the chairman/owner on request. O'Leary may not be as bad as some of the other managers who are on Ashley's list....

Despite apparently being a bit of a cunt, if he is interested in the job he is the most qualified/experienced manager we can get at the moment. I don't care if our manager is a knob, if we're winning games. Most people on here thought Sir Alex was a knob until recently, knobness or cuntness should not be used to assess potential managers. Ideally I'd like to give Shearer a proper stab at the job, but if it has to be O'Leary then I'll still get behind him - I shudder at the thought of who else Ashley could bring out of football's Room 101 of managers. Dave Bassett? John Gregory? Dr Josef Venglos? Bryan Robson? Graeme Sou... sorry, can't bring myself to say it. Imagine how sorry we would feel if O'Leary turns down the job due to initial fan reaction, and Ashley pays us back by giving Souness the job!

Howaythelad, your signature is great - it has just hammered home how crap the Souness era was and how damaging that shitty period was

Not sure if this has been posted before, but just had this fowarded to me from YouTube. Sat and watched it at work and funnily enough made me actually feel better about the new season. Even with all of the shit we had to go through, we were still only 1 point away from safety. Had a lot of bad luck towards the end. Even started getting a bit emotional at the bit were Sir Bobby is watching on. Just wish this current state of affairs could be sorted out so we can get back to supporting the team, get rid of all of the negative crap, keep out of the press for a bit and get ourselves promoted. Although probably not a popular view, I would even prefer Ashley to come out and say he was keeping the club and would modestly fund it in the short term, appoint Shearer and leave him to it. <Snip>

Another important point: - one of the main reasons for entering administration is that it gives a company a bit of breathing space, since during the administration none of your creditors can generally take any legal action against you, landlords can't kick you out etc. Given that Ashley is the main and perhaps only major creditor, then this is just going to make repayment of this loan even harder, and outside of his control.

Putting a club into administration involves appointing an independent third party insolvency practitioner who's role it so maximise return to creditors. Even if that is only Ashley, it would involve selling the club as a going concern i.e. a functioning football club. This would make more money than just selling our stadium and the players, which are really the only assets, by themselves, particularly since the terms of the stadium lease will restrict it to use for the purposes of Newcastle United Football Club - its worthless unless the whole club is sold. From a purely financial point of view, Ashley as the only creditor would lose out by a massive amount if he took the administration route rather than just selling to any party at a cut price. The only real difference to what he is doing now is that rather than being fully in control of what is being sold, an independant accountant is in control of what is being sold, rather than Ashley. Administration tends to be used when you want to get a functioning business out of the other side, with the creditors taking a certain (usually very low) percentage of the loans that they are owed. You usually lose what you have put in, in terms of shares. So if they put the club in administration, an accountant would be looking to sell the clubs assets to a new vehicle as a going concern (like Leeds), and the creditors (Ashley) would get a low % of his £100m "loan". He would get nothing for the share investment, after all of the fees were taken into account. Put it this way, if Ashley said "I'll sell the club for £60m and only expect £20m of the loan back if you get promoted within the next 3 years", then he would still be a lot better off than administration. That's why I think its unlikely, since anyone would snap his hands off for that deal, particularly what we have been told about the offers at around £100m, however they were structured. So its fairly unlikely that he would opt for administration where there is a chance of getting even a part of the price he paid for the shares. I suspect the difficulty we are having at the moment is that any bidders are putting in place bids which are very low AND involve writing off the whole loan. When Leeds was sold, there were a load of third party creditors, and the rationale for going into administration meant they didn't have to be paid in full.

I'm in the minority hoping that Barton will stay. We haven't seen him have a long run in the team, and when he has had a half decent run we have looked a better team. On the pitch, he doesn't give away half the fouls players like Smith and Nolan do, or at least it seems that way. I can't help but feel that Shearer handled the Liverpool sending off badly, and acted without thinking properly. When you look at it, Barton's tackle was no worse than Nolans against Everton, or Guthrie's against Hull. He needs to learn to handle players differently - all top managers know that. I'm not saying talent wise that Barton is anywhere near, but do you think Ferguson dressed Cantona down in front of his team mates after the Palace kung fu kick? We will never know what went on exactly, but I'm sure there was a way to punish Barton without finishing his career at Newcastle there on in. Even if Shearer had made his mind up that he didn't want him, effectively ending his career with NUFC so publically simply reduces the transfer fee you might achieve from him. If you at least pretend you want to keep him, you might get a better deal from the likes of Birmingham.

Potentially yes I think, it will be a loss on the share purchase and share sale

ALL of this - plus the nepotism, constant dealings with the likes of McKay etc AND the way he started the club's downfall by failing to either back SBR or bring in a new manager in the summer of 2003(because he didn't want money spent at that time) - is the reason that, after almost half a century, I will be finished with Newcastle United if it falls under his influence again. Whatever happened in past years, we always had hope that something better may be around the corner, but there is no way I would feel like that with him in charge - if NUFC has to depend on FS taking over to survive, then the club isn't worth a light in my view. Will never enter SJP again if this happens - the club will be a total laughing stock and deservedly-so. I've got to give respect to someone who has followed NUFC for 50 years, but isn't this an overreaction? I remember spending my early years supporting NUFC in the 80's (after Keegan had left) and early 90's thinking that we were nothing more than a club who would forever be in the lower reach of Division 1 or in Division 2. There were times under Ardiles when I thought I would never see NUFC competing with the top clubs again. I never felt like that under FS. Completely the opposite - even as the buffoon stumbled from one chaotic gaff to another, I always thought that we were in a blip, and we were one appointment away from challenging again. I had seen it with the Daglish/Gullit blip, followed by great times under Robson. Souness/Roeder/Allardyce was supposed to be just another blip. My view of FS is that he gambled irresponsibly with the club's finances trying to put as back where we were in the Robson days. The nepotism, use of McKay and other and public gaffs, and taking a healthy profit from the club would have been overlooked by most if he had managed to get it right with one of his appointments post Robson. But he didn't, and paid the price by being shafted by the Halls and being forced out. I'm not saying I'm overjoyed that he might be back. However what is more likely: 1. That he is sitting on a golf course in Spain with £50m in the bank and decides that in his 60's he would quite like to go and try and go through the abuse and pressure of going back to NUFC where he knows that he is generally hated, just to try and make a few extra £m. 2. His ego is such that he wanted to be the person remembered for bringing some silverware to NUFC, and sees this as a chance he thought he had missed? I'm going for 2. And whatever his faults, I would be veryhappy if he achieves his goal.

To be fair, apart from his second stint here he has left every club he has managed firmly established in a league one division higher than when he joined them. Southampton would kill for that. Fuck me, I know we would!

What a load of crap! If he transferred the land assets and then put the football club in liquidation then the liquidators would challenge all of those land asset transfers as undervalued transactions, and they could be clawed back. There would be no point. The land assets would need to be be purchased for market value, so that the creditors of the remaining football club were not fucked over. That's the law I'm afraid. Also, I'm not sure that the bit about not "owning" the land is correct. I believe they have a long lease from the Council of the land and everything on it. Having a long lease is a form of ownership - if you own your own flat you will most likely have it on a long lease. So they do "own" the land, but only in the same way that you might own a flat i.e. the freeholders will own it again in 100 years. Although I haven't seen the lease, I expect that the freeholders have restrictions in it which prevent the use for anything other than a football club or ancillary purposes.

Agree with the sentiment, but in actual fact I seem to remember Bracewell was injured for much of the first part of the season, and Sellars and Lee came in about halfway through. We put together that record breaking start without any of them (or Andy Cole). I use this point when anyone criticises Keegan as a manager as requiring money. In that promotion season, the only players he added to the first team to get the 11 league game unbeaten run were Venison and Beresford. This is probably a lesson in itself - you can't underestimate the value of proper full back to the rest of the team. Playing players out of position there just leads to disaster....

Can't deny he's overpaid, but he has outshone Jonas in pretty much every game I've seen in the second half of the season.

"Apologies for any inconvenience, normal service will resume in August 2010"

I'm looking at this a different way. A team full of Ronaldo, Rooney etc. with one eye on the final is going to be trying their damned hardest not to get injured. A team with talented kids who have a goal of a place on the bench for the CL final may be a better bet.

Looked at this thread since 12 this afternoon, and I reckon the winner has to be "NUFC IS FOR LIFE, NOT JUST THE PREMIER LEAGUE" Try and run a negative spin story out of that you shitcunt faced journalists. Actually, it would be really good if you could put the last sentence on the banner as well, doubt it would get on match of the day though.

They need to direct it at Ashley though. 'Epic Fail' is too general. Also a bit too 'lolz on teh internets' if ya ask me. Exactly this. Can't see this being representative of the majority of our older fans. Might as well put "Ashley's been p'wned" or whatever American crap is popular on myspace these days

Great idea, but its got to be something that all supporters will get behind, and that won't be used by the press in some negative way. Defiance, and maybe some humour, rather than the same message of Ashley out or cockneys out which the media will be clammering to see. Fuck them, give them something they aren't expecting. "N.U.F.C IS FOR LIFE, NOT JUST FOR THE PREMIER LEAGUE!!" "WE NEVER LIKED THIS LEAGUE ANYWAY" "FIRE SALE AT SPORTS DIRECT NEWCASTLE 90% OFF" Or something similar from the previous posts. MY own humble contributions: "AT LEAST WE MIGHT GET A TROPHY NEXT YEAR" "DOWN, BUT NEVER OUT" "THIS IS THE SECOND THING THAT HAS GONE DOWN ON ME TODAY"